Fedora 44 Beta Ships with GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, and Wayland-Only Default
Fedora Linux 44 Beta has arrived with simultaneous upgrades to GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6, dropping X11 sessions entirely in favor of a Wayland-only future. The release includes Linux kernel 6.19, GCC 16.1, Go 1.26, and a project-wide goal of 99% reproducible builds.
Fedora Linux 44 Beta has landed with a generational desktop upgrade: GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6 ship simultaneously, and the distribution has completed its transition to a Wayland-only future by removing X11 sessions from GNOME variants entirely. The beta, released on March 10, targets a final release around April 14.
Desktop Environments
GNOME 50 brings significant improvements to the file manager, settings application, and notification system. KDE Plasma 6.6, arriving in the KDE spin, replaces the SDDM display manager with the new Plasma Login Manager — a Wayland-native login screen that integrates more tightly with the Plasma desktop experience.
The removal of X11 sessions from GNOME is a milestone that Fedora has been working toward for years. While the Xwayland compatibility layer remains available for legacy X11 applications, there is no longer an option to run a full X11 desktop session. The Budgie desktop spin has also completed its migration to Wayland.
Developer Toolchain
Fedora 44 ships with a substantial toolchain refresh: GCC 16.1, glibc 2.43, Go 1.26, MariaDB 11.8, Helm 4, and Ansible 13. The GCC upgrade is particularly notable as it includes improved diagnostics and new optimization passes that benefit compile-time performance for large C and C++ projects.
The Nix package manager has been added as an officially available developer tool, reflecting growing interest in reproducible development environments. This does not replace Fedora's native RPM packaging but provides an additional option for developers who use Nix in their workflows.
Reproducible Builds
Fedora 44 sets an ambitious target of 99% reproducible builds — meaning that building the same source package twice should produce bit-for-bit identical output. The beta currently achieves approximately 90% reproducibility, with the remaining gaps primarily in packages that embed timestamps or use non-deterministic build processes. Achieving this goal would make Fedora one of the most verifiable Linux distributions available.
The Fedora 44 Beta is available for download in Workstation, Server, KDE, and other spin variants. The final release is scheduled for April 14, 2026.
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